


Like It's Hard?

by badgerpride89



Series: Afterword [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Comic Book Science, Gen, Miguel helps, Peni Parker is a BAMF, Peni wants her friends back, all the spiders - Freeform, seriously don't mess with Peni Parker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-03 22:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17292503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerpride89/pseuds/badgerpride89
Summary: Peni Parker goes after what she wants and never gives up until she gets it. What she wants is to see her friends again.How Peni gets the gang back together, with a little help from one dimension-hopping spider.





	Like It's Hard?

Peni remembers a story her dad once told her, of a young girl who was trapped in the spirit world. She saw many strange horrors and overcame many trials in a bid to save her parents and go home. The girl did eventually return to the outside world, which hadn’t changed at all. But she had. And so really, everything had changed. She’d always wondered how that girl turned out- whether she found a way back to the friends she left behind. Did she ever doubt her own experiences? How did the girl deal with the loneliness and isolation she must’ve felt, going back to a world which knew nothing of the change within her? Did she ever try to go back?

Peni feels like that girl right now as she hugs Aunt Mai and Uncle Ben. Days to her had only been hours to them and she’s been known to hole up in the lab for way longer, so they didn’t know. Until she sobs herself silly hugging and explaining what happened between halting gasps. They worry about her, always have, but the sheer panic on their faces is new. No, she’s seen it once before- the day Dad died.

“Oh, honey, your dad would just be glad that robot did what he built it to do: keep you safe and get you home,” Uncle Ben soothes her guilt. SP//DER had been the last thing Dad had ever made and now it was gone, lost to the void between dimensions. It just hurt so badly. Her spider croons into her ear, sending calming sensations down their link until Peni begins to feel more like herself and less like a failure.

“What do you need, kitten?” Aunt Mai asks as Peni dries her tears.

“My computer,” she mumbles.

Her aunt and uncle trade looks, they normally think she spends way too much time on that thing and not enough on her friends or Japanese studies, but this time they allow it without a fuss. Peni reenters the lab and darts towards the mainframe. It’s state of the art, fully capable of a neural link with a human being. Or human being with a psychic link to a robotic spider, in her case. She starts the bridge then dives into the spider’s stored memory.

The damage is pretty bad. It dumped everything related to their dimension when Scorpion destroyed the mech, a necessary sacrifice at the time to ensure no one could replicate their tech. She’ll have to start on a new mech from scratch and her father’s blueprints.

What it kept, however, is far more interesting.

Not just recordings of her new friends, though every second in that other world is there, but scans of each new spider-person, scans of the collider, energy readings and the molecular compositions of the multitude of alternate dimensions bleeding into Miles’ world. The atomic displacements, heck, the molecular and subatomic composition of their clothes, scans of herself and the others glitching…

It’s all right here. Everything she needs is right here. She squees with delight and begins the upload. She comes back to her own body with another squee and chirps, “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” to the spider, who sends her embarrassed acceptance. “You did so well,” she praises. “You liked them as much as I did, didn’t you?”

As the upload completes, she finds the backup files for the spider’s code and commands it to download and reinstall. She cracks her fingers and gets to work on the data- sorting, separating, tagging, and analyzing.

She discovers quite quickly that Miles, Peter, and Gwen have very similar universes, if the scans are correct. It felt that way at the time, too, structurally speaking they all look the most alike, like they could belong to the same universe. The differences are so minuscule, less than the difference between a redhead and a brunette, but those differences define everything. Layered on top of the MPG universes would be hers- it’s close but it’s like the DNA of a chimp versus a human. Physics seems to mostly play by the same rules between the four but there are differences; for example, how cells form and divide or how often. The molecular chains fascinate her. Theirs are more rigid- it takes way more energy to break the bonds of their universes than her own.

Well, that explains a few things.

Obviously between Benjamin’s and Porker’s universes, Benjamin’s is more similar to hers. The big things, like gravity and relativity and structure, are close compared to Porker’s but the smaller laws, like air currents and color, have jetted out the airlock. It’s crazy, thinking that Benjamin is black and white regardless of what world he’s in, that only black and white and shades in between actually exist in his world.

From what she can tell in her preliminary analysis, the quarks from the foreign universes were being zapped in and out of the correct frequencies by collisions with their dimensional counterparts, constantly in a state of dimensional superposition. Whenever enough of them were out of sync with each other, the glitches occur. It is all so cool.

Well, not the molecular decay and near death experiences, that’s not cool. But she has anything and everything she could need to find a way to communicate beyond her own dimension, to find a door to the others. She just needs to figure out how.

* * *

The first test is a trans-dimensional beacon. She’s not stupid, she has to go about this in a carefully controlled way or everything they all just fought for would be undone. She doesn’t have the tech (yet) to stabilize quarks in a foreign universe. But she’s willing to bet someone out there in the multiverse does. Their universal signature would probably be some combination of her own and the MPG variety- scans of the universes pulled into the collider bear closer resemblance to theirs than hers, as though the MPG universes are the target of a dart board while she’s in the inner middle ring with Benjamin in the outer middle ring and Porker at the board’s edge.

So the first step here is getting that someone’s attention. She just needs to figure out how to send signals across dimensions, or at least, create a signal interesting enough that someone else scanning the multiverse will pick up on the anomaly. Then there’s safety to consider. Another Fisk in another dimension could be launching his own tests into his own super collider and the last thing she wants is to draw that kind of attention. So, the beacon has to broadcast a signal but only the right one and only to the right people.

Peni allows herself one headdesk before getting back to work. The J-Pop pounds around her as her fingers fly through the calculations and process countless yettabytes of data. She’s deep in the link when the spider figuratively taps her shoulder. She acknowledges it but continues. It drops a single, brilliant idea into her lap. She smiles widely and sweat drops a little. It’s so brilliant in its simplicity she’s embarrassed she didn’t think of it first.

They are all spider-people.

* * *

The solution is a quick glitch signal across the dimensions. Whoever she’s looking for will have the technical capabilities to capture the glitch, even if it only lasts seconds, and trace it back. It’s like plucking a violin string, only the string is several dimensions’ worth of spider people. She rigs her laser to the correct superposition frequencies and places one of her own hairs in front of it.

“Sorry about this,” she preemptively apologizes to the others.

Safety goggles on, she starts the juice. The laser fires at the strand, bombarding it with the correct energy. She turns it off after five seconds- she doesn’t want to hurt or kill anyone.

The spider coos on her shoulder and she pats it.

“Don’t worry, you’re still helping me plenty.”

Now came the hardest part: waiting.

Fortunately, she doesn’t wait long. Hours later, as she combs through the different DNA strands, looking for more spider-similarities, there’s a commotion outside the lab. It’s loud enough to get through the J-Pop. She grabs her spider gun and the lab door whooshes open. Out in the main living room, amid the wreckage of their coffee table and wall-screen vid watcher, stands a man entirely out of place. Even from behind, he’s clearly from another dimension, his proportions are different and the light bends around him wrong. He’s wearing a spider-suit similar to Miles’ in color and texture. His hands are up because Aunt Mai’s got her phaser pointed at him. And there- yes! On his wrist is some kind of device, not a web-shooter, because who makes those things digital? Actually, that could be a fun project- focus.

“You’re from another dimension,” she declares loudly.

The man glances at her as she steps forward. Sure enough, the spider sense goes off. _Like me, you’re like me._ Now she’s got his full attention. She throws up a peace sign and a charming, disarming smile.

“Konichiwa, hajimemashite yoroshiku. My name’s Peni Parker, glad to see you got my message,” she chirps with a quick bow.

“ _Your_ message?” the man asks.

Peni scowls but tries to be understanding. “This is a dimension where teenagers pilot mechs to stop crime. Of course it’s my message.”

The eyes on the mask widen slightly as Aunt Mai lowers her phaser. “Sweetheart, who is this and what did you do?”

Peni shrugs, trying to downplay her own enthusiasm. “Nothing much, Aunt Mai, just jury-rigged a message into another dimension. He’s the one who heard and could investigate.”

She turns her attention back to the masked man. “And you are…”

“Miguel O’Hara,” the man says as he removes his mask. His skin tone is similar to Miles, though his hair is brown and his nose is smaller. He’s also way older than her- not Benjamin or Peter old but a grown man nonetheless. Unless his universe has a different definition of adulthood. Oh, please, don’t let her have to deal with an upstart teenage boy, she hates those.

Peni nods. “I need to discuss something  with you.”

“I figured,” Miguel drawls.

She leads him into the lab. The second the doors close, the spider activates the claws. They grab Miguel’s arm just below the trans-dimensional teleporter and haul him off his feet.

“Hey!” he yells but Peni’s focused on the device, scanning it and connecting to it. Miguel pulls and pulls but the second he readies a more violent solution, she releases him. The data comes on screen and now her focus settles on finding that piece of code or that alloy that’s keeping him and the device stable in her world.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, chamaca,” he says as he saunters towards her.

She turns up the J-Pop in response. The beats blare around her as she narrows her focus. It’s gotta be here somewhere.

Miguel grabs her wrist but he’s in her universe, not his. And in her universe, she can throw a man into the wall for daring to interrupt her work. So she does. She catches his faint ‘ow’ as he crashes into the mech’s backup parts. She stares at the latest software patches and her eyes widen. He’s got visual, one way contact with other dimensions, he’s _seen_ the collider fight. She finds a few other dimensional signatures here, other worlds she hasn’t mapped. This, this she can use.

“Okay, look, kid, I don’t know what you’re doing-”

“My name’s Peni, not kid,” she interrupts, spinning around towards him with her arms crossed.

“What the hell were you thinking, glitching us like that? Do you know what could’ve happened?” he growls.

“I was thinking that someone would put two and two together and trace the signal back here and come find me. Like you did.”

He rolls his eyes at her.

“You’re keeping an eye on other dimensions and you’ve found a way to hop from one to another. Why?” she asks.

He glares at her. “You got all that just from one scan.” She can hear the slightest respect in his voice.

She shrugs. “I’ve lived and breathed this tech all my life. My father was the greatest mech builder in a generation. Why are you building hoppers?”

“It’s a gizmo. And I don’t have to answer that.” He fiddles with the hopper and Peni knows she’s only got seconds before this guy vanishes right out of her life. She could do it on her own but the last few days have shown her just how much more is possible with others’ help.

“We’re both spider-people, if you’re mapping the dimensions, I’ve got a ton of data you’ll be interested in. Dozens of unique dimensional signatures already mapped and waiting for you to access.”

His eyes narrow and his hand drops away from the hopper. “Dozens? Really?”

She knows he’s just trying to get at her tech, same way she got at his. Which, fair.

“Look, why don’t we start over? I’m Peni Parker, and thirty-six hours ago, I helped save the multiverse. I want to see my friends again. I have a ton of data on dimensional differences and enough tech to cobble together my own communicator in a week, maybe two. But I’d rather not reinvent the wheel if I can help it.”

Miguel takes stock of her then sighs. “Miguel O’Hara. I’ve been experimenting with interdimensional visualization. Once I saw you and the others sucked into a different dimension, I realized travel was possible. So I’ve been experimenting with dimensional shifts, tagging different universes’ signatures in case something like that ever happens again.”

“You think it will.”

“I think it’s only a matter of time before something comes along and deliberately tries to destroy the multiverse, yeah. When that happens, I’d like to have backup.”

Peni nods. She gets that oh too well. Half of her villains could figure out this stuff if they worked together or weren’t busy mutating kids into kaiju for the fun of it.

“You show me your stabilizer tech, I’ll build you an inter-dimensional communication hub? And give you the sig data I already have?” Two way communication isn’t gonna cut it, not with Miguel’s grand plans of a spider army and Peni’s own desire for a six-way call.

He crosses his arms. “And how exactly are you going to do that?”

She grins. “Just watch me work.”

* * *

She cannot believe the stabilization process is so simple. She almost regrets handing over her data to a geneticist with a bad attitude. Until he glitches right in front of her. He’s only been here four hours.

“See, this is why we actually test this shit,” she growls as she hauls him into a comfy chair and hands him a blanket. “You know, using the scientific method? Not slapping stuff together and hoping it works. Gah.”

“Lyla doesn’t _slap_ anything together,” he snaps back, his voice edged in pain.

“You went from trans-dimensional peeking straight to hopping yourself through dimensions! Somehow, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

The software she builds to sync their communicators is crude but functional. It’ll allow them to continue their work together even separated. Good, next they can get to comparing the dimensional differences and figure out how to keep the connections operating without risking either of their lives.

* * *

It’s the carbon, Miguel explains that night, tucked up in his mansion with a hologram tutting after him. Peni can’t even laugh- she’s got a spider fussing in her ear to please sleep and shower sometime in the next twelve hours for optimal growth and care.

Compared to most of the atoms on the periodic table, carbon’s stable but flexible, energetically it’ll break most of its relatively easily. All organic material is composed of carbon, all of it (that she knows of, anyway). And their best power sources are found earlier in the table, lithium and sodium, for example. Hydrogen, too. If carbon’s not fully stable between worlds, they can probably kiss those power sources goodbye as a long term solution, too. Peni bangs her head on the keyboard.

“Hey, now, I need your brain intact until we solve this problem,” Miguel says, his face scrunched up in what may be concern.

“Oh, now that your tech doesn’t work properly it’s our problem?” Peni rolls her eyes at him.

He frowns. “You want this to work as much as I do. So we keep at it until it does. Got it?”

Peni takes a deep breath and begins again.

* * *

So, turns out sending signals between dimensions is the easy part- it’s not quite a glitch, more like Morse code between hoppers. Every signal’s made of electrons moving really quickly in a specific pattern. Converting their data back and forth between dimensions, because of course their instruments read different values for the same thing, and creating a program to do it automatically, takes the better part of an afternoon and evening. Finding a universal power source takes another day but they manage. Miguel’s hologram, Lyla, rebuilds the GUI to Peni’s exacting specifications- closer to a smartphone user interface than the crude bare command code they’ve been using. Texting is easy, video and audio take a little more refinement to become replicable.

* * *

Their little spider web now has two nodes.

* * *

Miguel bends the frequency and the two of them watch their next gen communicator prototype disappear from his world and reappear in hers. It’s not exact but it appears within five meters of the signal it’s locking onto - her universe’s unique quark patterns and her spider DNA. The new hopper has been stripped of most loosely bonded molecules for highly stable counterparts, save the power source. Peni laughs victoriously as it finishes forming in her dimension. She grabs it and carefully places it on the stand, where a dozen cameras from every angle and design are tracking the slightest molecular decay. It’ll be a few hours before they know how stable this one is.

“So, Miguel,” she says into her hopper. She’s going to strip and rebuild it once they confirm the new one works- better to wait for a backup before experimenting further. Hers isn’t in danger of disintegrating as it’s in the correct dimension but better safe than sorry. “How goes the mapping?”

“Honestly, I can’t figure out how you saved all this data,” he says, slightly fondly. “I’ve got full dimensional locks on a dozen with another ten being processed.”

She nods. “Send me that info when you’re done.”

“Chamaca, I am never done when it comes to research,” he laughs.

“Then send your processed points, then, jeez. You’ve got the five I wanted, right?”

“Got the two outer ones complete but those inners are tricky. Everything’s just slightly off, one wrong zero and it’s out the window.”

She tries control her frustration, really, she does, but she can’t help it. “Work on those, then, the others can wait!”

“Look, sometimes you gotta go for quantity, the more we have mapped, the easier it’ll be down the line-”

“Those are my friends who just helped save the entire multiverse. We had an agreement, they come first.”

“Do you know the level of precision it takes just to map one dimension as far out as yours or that pig’s, chamaca? The precision required to sift through the absolutely minuscule differences between those three worlds would take up my entire processing bandwidth. We have to get as many worlds mapped as quickly as possible.”

Peni scowls, trying to hold back tears. “They’re my friends,” she reiterates, “and for all I know, one of them died trying to get back home or stop the collider after I left.”

“They’re fine, I promise,” Miguel says, like he actually cares about her feelings.

“Don’t they deserve to know that they’re all fine?” she whispers quietly.

“She’s got you there, Miguel,” Lyla chimes in. “And refining our equipment to that level of precision can only help our future endeavors. You barely made it back from Earth-67, after all.”

“We do not discuss Earth-67, ever,” Miguel retorts as Peni laughs and dries her eyes.

* * *

The 2.0 hopper works like a beast. No decay, no glitch, nothing. Good, it’s ready for the next step: another dimension hop to its new owner. Problem is, there’s really no one she can send it to. Yet. Benjamin, as much as she likes him, has no idea how to handle this kind of tech and help her perform the next necessary tests. Spider-Ham’s dimension is also out of the question- physics and logic just don’t operate there, period, so they can’t isolate the software and hardware bugs from the world around it. At this stage, they have two choices: wait for Miguel to finish mapping one of the inners or teleport it to 67. Lyla suggests another world but Peni’s against it. She’d rather they use a world in which the Spider knows about the multiverse and video chatting.

Which leaves the inners. Miguel reluctantly shelves the other mappings in favor of Gwen’s universe but as he said, it’s slow-going. They have to check and recheck that the signals are exactly correct, there’s just so little space for error between Gwen’s universe and Peter’s and Miles’. If they don’t get one of the outers, like hers or Benjamin’s, then the signal will probably just hit nothing and die out. They get it wrong with the inners and the signal will glitch between dimensions and possibly fold those dimensions together. Not a pleasant prospect.

Reluctantly, Peni takes her hopper and leaves her lab. She makes up her futon and falls asleep as her head hits the pillow. It’s the first full seven hours of sleep she’s gotten since coming home.

* * *

 

The new hopper’s on, its camera feed live, and its link to Gwen’s world active as Peni watches it slowly disappear into the void. The space between dimensions doesn’t really have a look to it, the best she can describe it as is static, like the space between landing a robot on a distant planet and receiving confirmation that it’s actually landed safe and sound. She idly wonders if this is what her dad felt every time he launched a new mech or watched it go into battle for the first time.

Miguel’s online as well so they can each concentrate on the data they’re both receiving and compare it later. There’s a blerp sound and Gwen’s universe appears. Honestly, if Peni didn’t know any better, she’d swear this universe was Miles’ universe. The colors, the textures, a lot of it is exactly as she remembers from that other world. The key difference seems to be that the light favors purples and pinks while Miles’ leans on blues and reds. Even that is kind of a stretch, Peni will admit. Still, she marvels at the different textures and highlights of the new world.

“What the…” she hears as Gwen comes into view. She knows what this looks like to suspicious girl and acts quickly. Gwen’s screen flashes with ‘Peni Parker- Accept Call?’ as Peni dials from her hopper.

Gwen’s face furrows but her finger closes in on the camera. Whew.

“Konichiwa, Gwen,” she chirps as Gwen’s face appears in holographic form above her hopper and her own above Gwen’s.

Gwen blinks in surprise but settles into an amused smile. “Peni? What is this?”

“It’s a hopper, Miguel and I are making them. They’re communicators for now but eventually they’ll be able to take any of us to each other’s dimensions, isn’t that cool?”

“Wait, who’s Miguel?”

“A dimension hopping spider, don’t ask, he’s listening in right now, I have you on conference with him. Anyway, I’m running a few tests on this model and if all goes well, we can send them out to everyone, exciting, right?”

She can tell she’s overwhelmed the other spider but Gwen, trooper that she is, nods and smiles. “Do you have the others?” she asks, hope in her voice.

“Not yet, you’re the first one besides Miguel and me. But don’t worry, Miles is next on the list, once yours is confirmed working and we get his universe mapped correctly. It should add him to your contacts list automatically once it’s all said and done.”

Gwen crosses her arms and schools her expression. “What do you need me to do?”

Peni smiles and rattles off the test sequence- the first one is downloading and uploading various forms of data to and from Gwen’s universe through their hoppers, just to make sure the network is stable. Next go the glitch tests, followed by the hardware and holographic touch screen tests.

“You do know I don’t have access to your level of tech, right?” Gwen asks.

Peni nods. “I know, that battery should last you a couple of days without recharging. I assume you have a USB power connector, right? That’ll fit the power port just fine.”

“You made it compatible with USB?”

Peni shrugs. Why is everyone so quick to assume she doesn’t think of everything? She’s a mech pilot and engineer, the design process is kind of her thing.

“I dunno, sending batteries out across dimensions every week sounded like _such_ a good time.”

Gwen laughs then grows serious. “How would that work with Spider-Man Noir’s world? Or Spider-Ham?”

“We’re still figuring it out. Benjamin does have electricity and outlets in his world, though, so that’s a start. There’s a reason you’re the first, you know.”

“And why is that?”

Peni can’t say it’s because she really likes Gwen or because of the way Gwen lit up every time she didn’t think one of them was looking. Peni really can’t say it’s because she gets Gwen’s caution and walls or that she gets why the multiverse collision, dangerous as it was, was such a necessary, even wonderful event. She also doesn’t want to embarrass the other girl, particularly in front of an unknown spider.

Instead, Peni goes with the other truth, “Miles already has a lot on his plate, I’d rather just hand him a working hopper. And I really want Miles online before we add Peter. Bringing him on first would just give him a heart attack, I think.”

Gwen nods sagely. “You’ve got a point.”

All of them know how much Miles means to Peter, the last thing Peni wants to do is hand him a trans-dimensional communication device without the ability to talk to the one person he really wanted to say hello to. It’s a terrible feeling.

* * *

 Their little spider web grows to three nodes.

* * *

Peni chats with Gwen while she maps other dimensions as a favor to Miguel. Between mass-producing hoppers and double-checking the inners’ calculations, he has his hands full. And Peni is willing and able to help him out so she does.

“Ugh, I hate history exams,” Gwen grumbles but starts reviewing out loud.

Peni likes learning about other worlds so she occasionally interrupts Gwen’s reviews with questions. She thinks Gwen appreciates it- teaching someone else is a surefire way to master it yourself. At any rate, the other spider doesn’t object to her questions.

“Okay, ladies, get ready, we’re a go for launch,” Miguel signals and Peni shuts down her mapping programs.

“Ready, Gwen?” she asks.

Gwen puts her books down and replies, “Ready.”

The new hopper’s live and they watch it vanish from Miguel’s world into Miles’. Peni stares harder and harder at the screen as Gwen keeps dialing Miles’ universe again again.

“Miles, Miles, can you hear me?” she yells into the first dial tone that goes through.

Peni joins her. “Miles, pick up!”

Finally, Miles pops up on all of their hoppers. Peni fist pumps and Miguel’s got a real, honest to goodness smile on his face.

Gwen, meanwhile, plays it cool, though it’s offset by her too bright eyes. “Got a minute?”

Miles’ eyes widen and a grin overtakes his whole face. “Ohmigod, Gwen, Peni, is that really you? Is this real? How is this happening? Wait, everything’s okay, right? Like the multiverse isn’t ending again or anything?”

The girls laugh and even Miguel gets in a chuckle.

“Everything’s fine, Miles,” Gwen starts with the basics.

“Oh, cool, so that means I can travel to your dimensions this time?”

“That function was disabled the moment the hopper finished materializing in your world, Miles,” Peni answers. “It’s just too dangerous right now. We’ll reactivate it once it’s safe.”

“Ah, that’s a bummer. Still, this is way more than I expected. I thought I would never get to see you guys again,” he admits shyly.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Peni jokes.

Miles and Gwen laugh.

“So, you’re the Miles Morales I’ve heard so much about,” Miguel interjects, finally making his presence known. “I’m Miguel. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too. So, did you help Peni with these things?”

“I handle the hard stuff, she handles the communicators.”

“Excuse me, but we both handle the hard stuff, thank you very much. You’d still be sitting alone in your universe with only six other dimensions to play with if not for me.”

“Keep telling yourself that, chamaca,” Miguel says but after these last few days, Peni’s pretty sure he’s just joking.

She rolls her eyes so that Gwen and Miles don’t take him too seriously.

“Now that we’ve got you here…”

* * *

Peter B. Parker’s universe is… drab. Compared to the others, Peni just thinks it’s kind of there, nothing terribly remarkable about it. The camera feed shows a clean, brick, studio apartment, the bed neatly made, kitchen and dining table freshly scrubbed. Several stacked boxes sit in the open closet and the whole place has a lived-in, controlled clutter feel about it, from the bike carelessly askew in the front hall to the completely full trash can to the stacks of photos and chemistry journals strewn around the far bookshelves.

The bathroom door opens and Peter steps out. He still needs a good shave but his hair’s under control and the bags under his eyes have lightened considerably. He looks better than the last time Peni saw him. Thankfully, he’s fully dressed in a grey t- shirt and jeans, his web-shooters slung over his wrists.

Peni’s so glad she’s recording this. Because seriously, the look on Peter B. Parker’s face is priceless. Miles is the conference hub and it’s his face Peter sees first when he takes the call. Peter looks like all the holidays in the year came at the same time, like a tremendous weight has just been lifted off his shoulders.

“Miles? It’s really you?” he asks, his voice cracking.

“Yeah, it’s me, man. How you doing?”

“How am I- how am I doing? How are you doing? Are you okay? What happened with Kingpin? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, man, I’m fine. I beat him, destroyed the collider, webbed him up for the police, it’s all good. Seriously.”

Peter exhales a long, deep breath. “Good, that, that’s good. Great job, Miles, I’m so proud of you.”

The two of them just sit there quietly for a moment, taking in this new reality.

“So, how are you doing, Peter?” Miles finally asks and really, Peni feels like a voyeur. The rest of the hub is listed on the holoscreen in front of Peter, so he knows they’re there too but still.

Peter rubs the back of his head and sheepishly says, “Well, I’m not gonna complain. I mean, I could, but I’m not.”

“How mature,” Gwen deadpans and everyone giggles a little.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Blondie. You’ll always be my third favorite spider-person.”

“Who’s your second?”

“Whoever made this conversation possible.”

“You’re welcome,” Peni chirps alongside Miguel. Which, huh. She didn’t think he actually cared what his little army thought about him.

Peter turns serious. “Seriously. Thanks.”

“If you mean that, you’ll help us finish testing that thing before I pass out from exhaustion,” Miguel quips.

“Oh, stop being so dramatic, you got a whole five hours of sleep in the last two days,” Peni retorts.

“Yeah, and I’d like to make it eight out of seventy-two. Can we get started?”

Peni kind of feels sorry for him but she’s operating on as little shut-eye as he is. They’re a bad influence on each other - neither of one of them wants to break first and admit they’re only human. Peni won’t stop, not until she’s got Benjamin and Peter Porker live in her contact list.

* * *

 The web remains at five nodes for far too long.

* * *

It takes them another ten days to establish how, exactly, light and energy travel through Noir’s universe. A world with no color suggests very funky particle-wave interactions and sure enough, that’s what they find. Compensating for that involves theoretical physics and quantum realities that Peni’s only scratched the surface of, Miguel too. Pop cans and junk food wrappers spill out of her trash cans. She sleeps less and less, spends less time out of the lab because she can’t miss any little thing. Any zero or one could be the key to unlocking the outers and seeing her friends again. It gets to the point that Peni is ready to launch another glitch just to find another spider-person who can help them.

Fortunately, Lyla finally cracks the code, which, given that she’s an AI that literally designed the first hopper, Peni’s not too put out about it.

When she calls Miguel and sees a black and white world behind him, however, she damn near kills him.

“What are you doing?” she screeches at him.

He holds up the latest hopper, his masked face still betraying a smug grin. “Just a special delivery, chamaca. I was explaining how this thing works to your friend here and making sure the plugs we designed actually work.”

This is still so reckless, so dangerous. Yes, Miguel’s not in immediate danger of dying but nobody knows yet what too much glitching does to your overall health. Especially when the differences between home and the destination are more and more pronounced- Peni, Benjamin, and Peter Porker had all been affected way worse in Miles’ universe than Gwen and Peter, even with Gwen's extra days there.

Peni wants to be mad and take Miguel down a peg or three. But Benjamin’s standing right next to him, his bright goggles gleaming in the light of his office. He’s real and whole and definitely smiling at her under his mask.

“Happy New Year’s, Peni,” Miguel says, transfers the call, and hops back to his own universe. She’ll remember to yell at him and remind him to send her the scans later.

Right now, she’s fighting tears as Benjamin removes his mask. He’s been in a fight recently, his nose broken again and one eye a different shade of gray than the other.

“Hey, now, little black eye like this innit worth such a reaction,” he teases her lightly.

She sniffles and smiles. “I can’t-” Find the words. She’s never really been good with them when they counted.

“I knew you would find a way,” he says for her. “Though I must admit, not quite so quickly.”

“You know me,” she manages, “I do my best work under the clock.”

He laughs and makes himself comfortable at his desk. “Now I may not understand all of this interdimensional what have you, but I can listen to you talk about it. So give it a go.”

She starts talking, starts with the data she’s collected and the steps she’s taken. She veers into showing him recordings of the others, into showing off her lab, to her nightmares and insomnia, and how her body’s still adjusting to being back in her own world. To the fears she can shove aside only when working. He listens, his focus on nothing but what she’s saying, and makes her feel important. In turn, he tells her about his latest cases and stories, about the bar downstairs where the gin always flows despite Prohibition, about his colleagues’ reactions to the rubix cube, about his own reactions upon coming home.

“Peni, sweetheart,” Aunt Mai calls.

Peni winces. She’s going to be locked out of the lab for the next week.

“Peni, I know this is important to you but you’ve got to stop and take a rest, dear, you have to take care of yourself,” Aunt Mai says as she closes in on her, the spider, and the hopper.

She squints when she catches sight of Benjamin on the hopper’s holoscreen.

“Aunt Mai, this is Peter Benjamin Parker,” Peni introduces then says softly, “He saved my life in the collider. Benjamin, this is my aunt, Mai Parker. She helps me with my mech, sometimes.”

“Fair fortune to you, good lady,” Benjamin says as he tips his hat to Aunt Mai.

Aunt Mai smiles, flattered, then glances between them. She takes a moment, then comes to a decision. “You have ten minutes ‘til dinner, wrap it up, hon. You can talk again tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

Six nodes active, one to go.

* * *

In the end, Peter Porker contacts them two days later. Peni’s still clueless how that friend of his managed to hack into the web and create their own hoppers. Spider-Ham just shrugs and asks what she expected.

They talk for hours, her, Benjamin, and Porker. The others are great, of course, but these two designated themselves her lifelines during the Incident and she has missed them terribly.

When she shuts down the hopper for the night, she doesn’t activate the mapping programs or the displacement data. She sinks into her chair, head on her arms, spider snoozing in her hair, and finally, truly crashes. She sleeps through Uncle Ben carrying her to bed and Aunt Mai’s kisses goodnight.

Four months after the Incident, Peni’s new mech is up and running. It has black and white pig stickers on the chest plate.

Five months after the Incident, she and Miguel crack the carbon problem.

Six months after the Incident, she hops first to Benjamin then Spider-Ham’s universes and gives them both the giant hugs she’s owed them since they saved her life.

Seven months after the Incident, she hops to a nearby dimension. It went for cyborgs over mechs but a spider’s a spider, and Mary Jane Wattson is fifteen and scared. Peni sits with her the entire day then points her to Benjamin and Peter B. Parker’s numbers. They have almost a half century’s worth of experience, she tells Mary Jane, and if there’s one universal constant, it’s that experience makes a difference.

Through it all, Miles will distract her (his fonts and emojis are way cooler than anything she could design- they become standard options in the spider chat), Gwen will listen to her frustrated rants and moan over girl problems with her, Peter B. will schedule weekly bad B-movie nights where he’ll advise the teen spiders on any problem they have, Benjamin will hypocritically remind her to take care of herself, Peter Porker will make her laugh, and Miguel will push her beyond all of her limits.

But, today, six weeks, four days after the Incident, Peni Parker sleeps, secure in the knowledge she, unlike that girl in the story, found her way back to the spirit world.


End file.
